posted at 8:41 pm on September 26, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

The United Nation’s’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is all set to release their big, ultra-important climate change report in which they have already revealed that they will proclaim they’re 95 percent really super cereal about the causes and effects of global warming — but strangely enough, even this latest profession of certainty in the imminent planetary devastation being wrought by mankind’s activities is failing to inspire the nations of the world to pony up the cash for the that august body’s latest climate venture. This is very frustrating for the progressive, globalist bureaucrats at the United Nations, as you might imagine, via the Financial Times:

Weak economic conditions are going to be a drag on the world’s newest global climate financing body as it finally opens its doors for business, its head has warned.

“Grants and concessional loans are scarce resources, especially in a world where many of the traditional developed country contributors are still recovering from the global financial and economic crisis,” said Hela Cheikhrouhou, executive director of the UN’s Green Climate Fund.

“It is not an easy conversation,” she said of her plans to start talking to potential donor countries for a first round of pledges to the fund, which is expected to handle much of the $100bn a year wealthy countries have said they will raise by 2020 to help developing countries deal with climate change. …

Nearly four years after the Green Climate Fund was first proposed, it is still not clear where even the first $100m will come from for the Green Climate Fund, which is to be based in South Korea’s Songdo development in Incheon.

The fund’s executive director goes on to lament that the failure to act immediately “is like a snowball effect: the more you delay action the more the action will be costly,” but I wonder if she’s really thought that statement through.

As we’ve seen time and again throughout the world, people’s concern about their impact on the environment is a luxury good that gets more and more scarce as economic conditions worsen (nobody has the leisure time or spare cash to think about their carbon footprint when they’re just worried about feeding their families, for instance). Since many of the developed and affluent countries around the world are currently in or near recession-like economic conditions, extra funds and public concern are something increasingly difficult to come by, but this hasn’t stopped United Nations and eco-radical types from openly advocating for voluntary economic contraction as the best way to combat global warming.

If economies everywhere are contracting, however, I’m not sure where they think they’re going to get the money to install their expensive and ambitious renewable-energy projects — which, as several European countries are learning, are not currently cost-effective and are causing higher energy prices that are in turn making people poorer. These so-called environmentalists can hate on economic growth all they like, but robust prosperity is the only thing that will ever bring about the innovations, efficiencies, and alternative technologies for which they claim they’re so ardently aspiring.

As ViaMeadia notes, holding off on these price-inefficient technologies that often drain public finances for now could actually pay off; who knows what the next few years will bring in terms of technological advancement, and insisting upon rustling up a bunch of cash and acting right this moment is a surefire way to waste a lot of money.

Blowback

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There are tons of movies out there that further the myth that the UN is relevant, efficent, and competent [pause for laughter].

But, I can’t recall one movie where the UN was the hero. Where that Star Wars Cantina scene brought to Turtle Bay made a difference.

A few years ago, I happened to be in NYC for a wedding and had some time to kill. I took the UN tour because I was interested in the architecture and part of the problem with the organization is that they rely on the kindness of others. The UN HQ is an architectural time capsule from the 1950s. During the tour the guide told us that we’d only be in the public spaces because the UN was a working organization. I don’t think I entirely hid my snort.